David Emery OnlineLadies and gentlemen, please welcome on stage: Textpattern 4.0.7!
We are happy to announce that Textpattern 4.0.7 is finally ready for public consumption.
During long and – sometimes – laborious months since the last release in February, we added new features and enhanced existing capabilities, but nevertheless we expect upgrades from any previous version to be seamless and smooth.
Lots of good new features here, especially the tag related ones which make Textpattern even more flexible – well worth an upgrade.
Visit ➔Google Adds Voice Recognition to iPhone App
I have a very good feeling about Google’s new iPhone app that does voice recognition. I’ve been playing with this voice recognition application for several weeks and I have to say that I’m really impressed. First and foremost, the voice recognition works really well.
It’s actually quite wonderful to be able to lift your phone up to your ear, speak a phrase and have the results pop-up on screen for you. It works surprisingly well, even with my non-US accent, although I’m not sure if I’ll ever actually use it.
Also, fyi for everyone that’s not in the US – you need to enable it in the preferences after you update, as it’s not on by default.
Visit ➔MySpace Launches Profile 2.0. No, You Don’t Have to Switch
…today MySpace is introducing Profile 2.0. Unlike Facebook’s recent redesign, MySpace’s redesign is fully optional and will remain so for a long period of time – MySpace’s official blog mentions years. Facebook’s gradual rollout of the redesign was carefully handled, but there were still a lot of angry users who wanted the look and feel of their old profiles back. As a result, MySpace isn’t taking any chances here.
Two things: 1) The whole ‘new’ Facebook fiasco should be ignored, but is a good reminder of how much people fear change. MySpace could have never done the same thing, as people have spent a lot of time customising their profiles already. 2) Obviously this looks a bit better, but it’s still not exactly great, is it? Also, does anyone know if you can upgrade a music/band account?
Visit ➔Ian Rogers' Digital Music Manifesto
On the connection between artists and fans: “Think about perspectives that matter. The artist, and the fan. I was on a panel last week in London at Musexpo and I listened to my friend Rob Wells from Universal Music Group talk to a gentleman from Nokia about Nokia’s Comes With Music for half an hour, and I was just sitting there thinking, these guys could talk for an hour and not mention music, an artist or a fan.
I bumped into Ian when he was in town last week – he’s a really nice guy and up to some very interesting things. Well worth a read.
Visit ➔iPhone Apps Could Be the New MySpace Page
Recording artist Pink is the latest to make waves in this area with a free iPhone app called “P!nk’s Funhouse” (iTunes link), according to Billboard, which includes 30-second previews from her upcoming album, news, photos and other “essentials to connect you to Pink’s music.” Others rumored to be working on similar applications include Fall Out Boy and Snow Patrol, while Nine Inch Nails plans to release a special version of the iPhone app Tap Tap Revenge that will let players tap along with various NIN songs.
I’ve been having a good look at music iPhone apps for a while – understandably, I guess, as my background is originally in Mac development and now in the music industry. However, I haven’t really hit on the right use of the technology yet – sure, we could do silly little apps like this Pink one (which is basically a song preview-er + RSS feed + biog) but I don’t think they add any value for the consumer.
All of what’s in that app could be (and probably is) on the artists website, which you should be able to get at on the iPhone (assuming they haven’t used any Flash…). Maybe if you could listen to full tracks this would be more interesting, but as it is this sector of the market is just people spending money to look like they’re doing something.
Visit ➔typeface.js
Instead of creating images or using flash just to show your site’s graphic text in the font you want, you can use typeface.js and write in plain HTML and CSS, just as if your visitors had the font installed locally. This is a work in progress, but functional enough at least to render the the graphic text on this site.
Looks like it be a viable alternative to sIFR, and seems to load a bit quicker too.
Visit ➔AC/DC Music Video Distributed as Excel Spreadsheet
They decided on this unusual format because they wanted the video to penetrate even the most Draconian corporate firewalls. After all, who can’t receive an Excel spreadsheet?
Obviously a gimmick, but quite an amusing one.
Visit ➔Huffduffer
Using the service is pretty straightforward. First of all, you have to sign up. No, I haven’t implemented OpenID support. Sorry. I hope to get around to it at some stage.
Secondly, you find MP3 files out there on the web. Using either a bookmarklet, or a form on the site itself, you “huffduff” the file: give it a title, description, and tags.
That’s pretty much it. People can subscribe to your podcast and you can subscribe to other people’s podcasts. You can also subscribe to a podcast of files with a certain tag or a combination of files from a particular person with a particular tag. Basically, if there’s a page for it on the site, there’s probably a corresponding podcast you can subscribe to.
Very nice way of automatically creating a podcast feed out of MP3s you find on the web – think Delicious but just for audio. Perfect for micro-mp3 blogging – I think I’ll integrate my Huffduffer feed into this main blog feed when I get a chance…
More info on Jeremy’s Blog.
Visit ➔